OK, so the granddaddy of oval car logos must be the Ford blue oval, but they sure do have a lot of imitators. So, how about a Vellum Venom on Comparative Oval Logos in the Automotive Industry? Or if you don’t like this pitch, maybe put Sanjeev on it. I bet he’d do this article.

Here’s the logos I can think of right now, all horizontal ovals:

Ford

Subaru

Kia

Hyundai

Toyota (the modern tri-oval T logo)

Daewoo

Infiniti

Scion

(Don’t forget Lexus and Land Rover – SM)

An oval (technically these logos are all ellipse-shaped, but nobody calls it the “blue ellipse”) is a pretty basic shape, but when I think of other corporate logos, I don’t see a lot of horizontal ovals (round logos? Yes, both in and out of the car industry). Even the proportions of these logos all seem pretty close (though Ford looks like the widest of the bunch).

Sajeev answers:

That Sanjeev jerk didn’t spend a year at The College of Creative Studies honing his immense drawing skills into an…ummm…dammit, he gets no airtime in this series!

Now, you have a very valid point: corporations be rippin’ off the Ford logo like whoa.

But it’s wiser to go Ford Oval instead of something potentially displeasing to the buying public, even though I can’t stand the copycat-ism either. Yet I found myself “under the influence” in CCS’ design studios. The worst was a front fascia I made similar to a GEN I Prius, with a more exaggerated snout. It was the first rendering of my second semester at CCS. And the result? Scorn? Shame and ostracization?

Nope. People were kinda quiet, instead of openly critical. Others, those I considered friends, said, “Whatever you did over Christmas break, it’s working! You are really getting the hang of it now!” Even my normally harsh teacher mentioned my progress.

It was bittersweet, as this wasn’t my best work. Even if it was…

So what’s the problem? Design studios are all about concept inbreeding: if GM (Harley Earl, Bill Mitchell) does it, why not do the same as their cross-town rival? Fame and fortune await! Or maybe we’ll hire their design honcho for ourselves (KIA), reaping even more fortune! As Grandmaster Flash said in the link above:

Except, is he? I know he insists he’s done a phenomenal job, and I can see merit to some of his actions. But there’s just so much obfuscation, and insistence that he’s saved billions of dollars (that he can’t exactly prove beyond repeating his talking points) that I honestly don’t believe we’ll know if he’s done the city any good for decades (I lean towards him having done a few good things in the short term that make great headlines, at the expense of the city in the long term).

Just for the record, I hope Rob Ford gets the help he needs to kick this habit. I was looking for a “Built Ford Tough” T-shirt that his supporters made, but when this photo came up in Google image search, well, I couldn’t resist.

My understanding is that KIA intentionally did a logo the same shape as Ford’s to make it easy to rebadge the cars they were making for them. Don’t remember where I read that, though.
Hyundai’s logo seems to be about the same, possibly for the same reason once they tied in with KIA?

In late 1997, Ford spun off its heavy truck division to Freightliner, a subsidiary of Daimler. The acquired division was sold under a newly developed brand called Sterling and its logo was exactly proportioned to match the shape of the Ford blue oval for rebadging purposes. (Production of Sterling trucks ceased about five years ago.)

(This more recent Sterling should not be confused with the first U.S. truck manufacturer originally called Sternberg, which began in Wisconsin in 1907, became known as Sterling about 1914, and was later merged with White in 1951. The original line of Sterling trucks were no longer produced after 1953.)

A quick look at the Google images shows that the Fratzog descended from a star of David. The current Ram symbol appears to be similar to an inverted Fratzog, which in turn resembles a vagina/cervix/fallopian tube image. Wow!

Pontiac’s arrowhead was pretty consistent after they abandoned Chief Pontiac. Living in the great southwest though a few of my friends who happened to be Native American thought they could have sold more Pontiacs if they had kept the lighted head. But of course they would have considered it some sort of ironic statement. Like the trucks I see with chrome Cleveland Indians front plates. I don’t think there are that many Indians fans in New Mexico/Arizona.

AvtoVAZ went to an oblong for ease of rebadging too. It’s all over the world now. Do keep in mind that the bowtie can easily be placed onto an oblong base. Pretty soon the only ones left will be Honda, Jeep, and Citroen.

Then this post is very appropriate, with attention to logos all around. The thing about this TTAC logo is that for some reason, it has the appearance of being squashed vertically. Also, I think the “shiny simulation” should be removed, since modern schools of designs dictate either flat colors or very subtle gradients. Lastly, the logo will need to be displayed in a higher resolution in order not to look pixelated on “Retina” screens, such as on the iPad I’m currently using. But I like the foundation of this new logo, and hope that the rest of the site gets redesigned to match it.

I have to say that I completely agree. Oldsmobile went from producing cars that were similar to comfortable, nice Buicks to making imitation Grand Am’s.

I know I’ll start a war saying this, but I’ve always felt that the newer Pontiac’s were cheap and plasticky. Of course, I own a 2000 Impala as a project- cheap and plasticky seems to be the design cues for most GM cars of the era.

That Nash badge was neat, with its heraldic look. I had the fortune of seeing a “bathtub” Nash this past summer, what a neat looking car. Think it was a Statesman, but it might have been an Ambassador.

I always thought companies did matching ovals for all of their brands (Toyota/Lexus/Scion…Hyundai/Kia) so that they could share airbag covers and such. Of course, that kind of thing is frowned-upon nowadays.

Also, earlier today, I was trying to figure out which Nissan was the first one to debut the brand’s current logo. Was it the 2002 Altima?

They did? Wow. Well, that’s worse than the original DB7, which was based on the Jaguar XJS, and was therefore deemed “The Jag in Drag”. It’s even worse than the time when Aston Martin was covering Volvo key fobs with leather and calling them their own…

The latest Grand Theft Auto games have a parody of Ford in it. It’s Vapid motors and their logo is a red logo with Vapid in script. Many of the cars do look like their real life Ford counterparts, the Dominator is a S197 Mustang, the Stanier sedan is a Crown Victoria, the newest police cruiser is a Taurus Police Interceptor (though in the game it’s RWD) and their others too.

Though if I recall, Grand Theft Auto 3’s police cruisers had blue ovals in the grille, those were kind of like a cross between a ’96 Caprice and a similar vintage Crown Victoria.

You also have to look at the age of the design. Of all the logos Ford’s is the oldest and the most stable of them all. Toyota, Scion, Lexus are the newest and the most “modern”. Scion and Lexus are made to reflect Toyota, of course. Most of the GM division logos seem to be based on a square to reflect the GM square I assume. Since the logos are not the most modern with Chevy being the oldest unchanged logo it must be revisionist history.

I would expect most of it comes down to packaging. A logo is only meant to be shorthand for the brand/corp. It needs to bring forth through iconography whatever the company wants us to think with as few fripperies as possible while staying unique. Circles and ovals are ready made medallions, easily able to provide a nice frame for contents without looking awkward, and pretty cheap to reproduce well.

Ronny should chime in on how easy it is to embroider Ford stuff versus some of the other brands.

Hate to be pedantic, but I shall be. You forgot:
-Venturi
-Bugatti
-Oldsmobile
-Mahindra
-Great Wall
-Lada
-Pagani
-Zastava
The first Ford logo to be an oval was used in 1912 until 1927, when it became blue. I believe Bugatti used the same logo in 1910 as it does today, predating the not-yet blue oval by 2 years.

I reckon there’s also something to do with an oval badge scaling up or down better.

For example, when Holden started bringing in rebadged Daewoos to Australia, it was obvious the spot for the badge was really designed for the Chevy bowtie (or something short and long). When they forced the Holden badge into such a small space, it ended up looking (IMO) stupidly small…

http://www.classycars.org/Holden/Holden.2005.Cruze-04.jpg

An oval badge would still be small, true, but would still look better I think…